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In
this issue: Fun Expo gives paintball competition to the world of FECs; Cedar Point can't get its fill of Top Thrill yet; New Jersey State Aquarium gets a new star thanks to Nemo; IAAPA's incident reporting gives National Safety Council data to chew on; MOSI gets recognition for its catering efforts; Kids give Knoebels gifts for Give Kids the World; Towering raccoon gets and gives all the attention at Astroland; We welcome back Parrot Jungle Island and flyers at Lake Compounce; We welcome anew a farm at Story Land, a flume at Crealy Adventure Park, and an Africa exhibit with kayaking at Brevard Zoo; In the nursery you will find Canyon Blaster at Great Escape, High Anxiety at Mountain Creek, Saturation Station at Quassy, a carousel at Silver Springs, Clipper Cove at Lake Compounce and Steel Venom at Valleyfair; and, We award parks for their promotional gifts, For
a printable version of this newsletter, For
more information on the facilities and organizations featured in
this newsletter, visit our Connections Page. For
back issues of THE LOOP, Painting
the industry The
newly formed Fun Expo Action Sports Advisory Committee will be sponsoring
a paintball tournament at this year’s Fun Expo Trade Show in
Las Vegas September 17-19, part of a concerted effort to introduce
action sports to family entertainment center operators, and the
FEC industry to action sports entrepreneurs and suppliers. “I
think action sports has a place in FECs, and operators would be
nuts to not look at it,” said Harold Skripsky, owner of the
consulting firm Entertainment Management Services. The past president
of the International Association for the Leisure and Entertainment
Industry is currently chairman of the Leisure & Entertainment
Trade Shows, the umbrella organization that represents Fun Expo
sponsors IALEI, the American Amusement Machine Association and the
Amusement & Music Operator Association. “Our goal and aspiration
is to bring paintball and action sports into the mainstream of FECs.” Skripsky,
along with Giovanni D’Egidio, owner of Hollywood Sports Park,
is co-chairing the Fun Expo Action Sports Committee. D’Egidio
is using his connections to put together an invitational tournament
featuring 10 five-man paintball teams who will compete in an arena
on the Fun Expo trade show floor at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
This is a significant step up from the paintball demonstrations
staged last year. Additionally, seminars will be conducted on the
subjects of paintball, skateboarding and BMX biking, training sessions
that will be geared to both FEC operators and action sports entrepreneurs,
Skripsky said. “We
have all been sitting around wondering what is the next big attraction
that’s going to get us 10, 15, 20 percent in new incremental
sales,” Skripsky said of his fellow FECers. “The last
one was laser tag, and we haven’t had any since. I really think
that paintball done well can be a good addition to family entertainment
centers. And I think it mixes well.” Doing
a proper paint ball arena or two in 40,000 square feet (3,716 square
meters) of land can cost from $200,000 to $400,000, he said. The
more thematic, the higher the cost. Paintball arenas can also be
indoor. “You would typically put paintball and action sports
as a separate attraction, separate profit center from your FEC,”
he said. “You don’t want your players walking around your
FEC with markers,” markers being the name for paintball guns.
Skripsky
said he has advocated integrating action sports, particularly paintball,
into FEC operations for almost five years, and now is preparing
to put his money into play on the subject. He plans to open a paintball
arena at Timothy and Joanne Sorge’s Swings-N-Things near Cleveland,
Ohio. “Tim had six acres (2.4 hectares), and he was scratching
his head wondering what to do with it,” Skripsky said. He is
putting in one 26,000-square-foot (2,415-square-meter) arena with
burned out cars and buildings, and two other inflatable fields totaling
20,000 square feet (1,858 square meters). Though
paintball has been around 20 plus years, it only recently hit the
radar screen of entertainment operators. Hitherto, most paintball
and action sports entrepreneurs have been independent operators.
At the least, Skripsky and his fellow committee members hope the
two genres mingle at Fun Expo, if the tournament, as expected, draws
paintball operators and suppliers to the show. “IALEI tries to keep operators informed as to what is on the horizons for the businesses,” Skripsky said. “Our job when we see something we feel is going to benefit our operators is to bring it to their attention. I think we’re doing our job.” After a promising launch, Top Thrill Dragster has been unable to consistently surmount its challenges. Photo by Eric Minton/THE LOOP Top
Thrill still The
cause for celebration was the reopening of Top Thrill Dragster,
the 420-foot (128 meter) hydraulic launch coaster from Intamin that
had been shut down 15 straight days. In fact, since June 4, Cedar
Point’s $25 million investment had been down more often than
up, and even in the past week its performance has been sporadic,
though it has operated every day since Friday except Tuesday. Traditionally
Cedar Point has shied away from prototype rides, though it was the
first park to surmount 200 feet and 300 feet with coasters, and
those used new technology. Even Top Thrill Dragster, the
world’s highest and fastest coaster, is not, by definition,
a prototype because Intamin installed its first hydraulic launch
coaster using a similar top hat profile track at Cedar Point’s
sister park, Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California,
last year. Nevertheless, Top Thrill Dragster represents cutting-edge
technology, and its hydraulic launch system has proven incorrigible
to the park’s and manufacturer’s technicians. Not just
one element is to blame, either, but a series of failures have occurred,
all tied to the launch system. Despite
getting the coaster running again over the weekend, park management
still won’t be satisfied until Top Thrill Dragster operates
consistently, Witherow said. “At this point our goal is to
get Top Thrill Dragster operating in a consistent manner
like the rest of our rides,” she said. “We can’t
keep telling our guests it’s up, it’s down, it’s
up, it’s down. We need to get to a point of telling our guests
its reliable.” If it can’t get to that point, she said,
“We will close it for the remainder of the season for a complete
review.” No timetable for such a decision has been set, she
said. This is new territory for Cedar Point. The park has worked out bugs on new rides before, a given in the amusement industry, but never has it had an icon ride totally silenced for weeks at a time. “We are learning a lot of things as we go,” Witherow said. “We’re going on how we would want to be informed if we were visiting Cedar Point.” The
park’s marketing team has taken the approach of unabashed publicity
about Top Thrill’s status. Five days after the ride
first shut down on June 4, Cedar Point began posting daily status
reports on its web site, using a special icon on the home page.
The park also put daily updates of the ride’s status on its
telephone hotline, and both of these notices have been publicized
through local media stories whenever possible. “We feel it’s
very important to let guests know the status of the ride if it was
their reason for coming to Cedar Point,” Witherow said. For
those guests who may not have checked the web site or called ahead
of time, the park is handing out flyers at the parking toll booth
listing that day’s Top Thrill status. Signs at all of
the entrances further inform guests of Dragster’s mood
for the day. This allows guests to turn away before paying to park
or for an admissions ticket. So far, Witherow knows of no guest
turning away. “People
have been disappointed, and we can empathize with that—nobody
has been more disappointed than us at Cedar Point who have worked
so hard to get this ride up and running consistently,” she
said. “The vast majority of guests have been very understanding.”
She said the staff has received e-mails and calls of thanks, “and
people stop us on the midway thanking us for communicating the status
of the ride.” “More than anything we’ve learned what we’ve known all along, to communicate with our guests and let them know as much as possible what is happening,” Witherow said. “We want to be up front and as honest as possible.” The
clown prince “They
don’t care about sharks and penguins, which was shocking for
us,” Cute said. Reporting
report The
latest study was gleaned from IAAPA’s voluntary incident reporting
project. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions
last year had its members begin submitting annual stats on injuries
at their properties. This information was included in an analysis
published in the National Safety Council Research and Statistical
Services’ June/July issue of Injury Insights newsletter.
The
release of this information reveals that the voluntary reporting
system has, by and large, been successful. An average of 46 of the
top 48 U.S. parks participated in each of the past two years’
surveys, along with a sample of more than 100 smaller parks, tourist
attractions and family entertainment centers. “We were very
pleased with our membership’s initial response to this important
safety data initiative, and we expect even greater participation
in future years as members become more familiar with the process,”
said IAAPA President J. Clark Robinson in a statement. The
information also reveals that fixed amusement rides are, by and
large, safe. “The results are very much in line with data at
the state agency level and thus further confirms what the industry
and the public have known all along, that amusement parks and attractions
are an exceptionally safe form of recreation for the entire family,”
Robinson said. According to the survey analysis, the fixed amusement
ride sector sees an average of 2,486 injuries per year in the United
States. The
NSC analysis acknowledges that, historically, self-reported data
tends to be as much as 15 percent lower than the truth. Even so,
that’s still less than 3,000 injuries in a sector with an estimated
303 million users per year. The IAAPA survey results also are lower
than the 6,704 estimated injuries put forth in the latest U.S. Consumer
Product Safety Commission report, but as that figure is derived
from data from 100 U.S. hospital emergency rooms, previous independent
studies have concluded that the CPSC figure is geographically skewed. Whichever
figure we use, the NSC newsletter provides a perspective showing
how low the injury rate in amusement parks truly is. One of its
tables lists “Injury Risk for Common Recreational Activities.”
Drawn from a variety of sources, the table lists 24 recreational
activities, with basketball (876 injuries per million participant
days) and football (864) the most injury-prone activities, way ahead
of soccer at 343. Bicycling has a rate of 232, fishing 88, golf
68, badminton 24. Tied at 8 are billiards/pool and fixed-site amusement
rides. The only recreational activity listed as safer than fixed-site amusement rides is darts with rate of 3 injuries per million participant days. Titanic
undertaking Which is precisely why the museum hired Spicola a year ago. “We haven’t had the position before to have someone focused on bringing in that type of business,” said MOSI’s Public Relations Manager Beverly Littlejohn. “We wanted to do it for years, and we’ve had facility rentals, but this takes it to a whole new level. It certainly provides another revenue stream that we did not take advantage of before.” Spicola
brought along with her from the Wyndham her chef, Pablo McMorris
of Jamaica, and catering manager, Victor Ferguson. With
the ability to serve good food and stage great events, Spicola started
peddling. “Our biggest challenge was letting people know we
do it. I will go to shows, have a booth and the people would say,
‘The food is wonderful—oh! you’re MOSI? MOSI does
catering?’ That’s our new motto: ‘Yes, we cater.’” The
best way to get the word out that, yes, MOSI caters was to invite
the Meeting Planners International Tampa Bay Chapter in for a luncheon.
In doing so, Spicola was nominating her team for the chapter’s
annual Venue of the Year award, but her primary purpose for the
luncheon was to get word-of-mouth marketing started through the
city’s corporate hallways. That worked: she started getting
corporate business after the luncheon. However, MOSI also landed
the big award last month, receiving the Venue of the Year for excelling
in the presentation of food, taste and service. “We went up
against quite a few good venues, too,” Spicola said. A party
could start with drinks and appetizers in one of the galleries,
allowing the guests to play with the exhibits in the meantime. Then
they would sit down to dinner in the museum’s grand lobby followed
by a movie or presentation in the IMAX Dome Theatre. The evening
could finish with desserts and telescope viewing on the roof. Beginning
this fall Spicola is seizing on the perfect synergy between MOSI’s
exhibitry mission and venue rental business. The traveling Titanic
artifacts exhibit opens at MOSI October 4 and runs through the winter.
Spicola’s team is offering Titanic-themed menus for the occasion,
including first class and steerage meals, and the 11-course dinner
served the night the ocean liner sank. Parties are booking up, Spicola said. People have learned that MOSI caters. Boy and how! Community
Spirit But
now the community gave back. Specifically, the Spirit of Bethlehem,
a service group at East Hills Middle School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
gave back to Knoebels. The organization’s advisor, John Coyle,
called the park last year proposing a reward outing for his students,
but with one caveat: the students had to perform a service. “We
had them pick up trash for a half hour,” Muscato said. This
year when Coyle called, his conversation with Muscato turned toward
Knoebels' work with Give Kids The World, providing an amusement
park experience for terminally ill children and their families.
Knoebels used to provide the families disposable cameras through
a sponsorship with Kodak, but this year the film maker dropped the
program, and Knoebels had no cameras to give out. So,
Spirit of Bethlehem’s 56 members raised money to buy the cameras
plus little blue teddy bears bearing a Spirit flame insignia. They
didn’t stop there: each student wrote a personalized note to
accompany the camera and bear. “There seems to be a couple
of neat things like that each year, but that one kind of went over
the top,” Muscato said. What made the gesture particularly special for Muscato was the line of 56 young teen-agers individually handing him the cameras, bears and notes. “It seemed very important to these kids to hand them to me directly as a pipeline to the people receiving these things, since I try to be the one to greet the (Give Kids The World) families,” Muscato said. “These kids were quite serious about this. When I see the age of these kids and the amount of public service they must do over the year, that’s a pretty incredible thing. This is middle school, you know.” Rocky’s
revival "The
Daily News was the first to do the story, and then more news
people called and more news people called and more news people called,”
said Mark Blumenthal, Astroland’s manager. “I couldn’t
believe it.” Rocky
apparently climbed a ladder inside the tower’s tube. “He
just kept going up and up,” Blumenthal said. He got through
a hole in the machine room capping the tower. One of the maintenance
workers saw the raccoon’s eyes one morning and reported the
trespass. Later, Blumenthal saw a raccoon near the base of the tower
and figured the now-dubbed Rocky had climbed down of his own accord.
But that turned out to be a different raccoon; a few days later
Rocky was again spotted at the top. Now
Blumenthal was worried. “I was afraid he’d start chewing
up the wires,” he said. “There was no food up there for
him. And the maintenance guy wasn’t too happy having a raccoon
up there.” Before he could set a rescue into action, the Daily
News got hold of the story. “All I wanted to do was get
rid of this thing, and everybody is going, ‘No, no, no, this
is great publicity.” Sure
enough, two television news teams sent helicopters for aerial coverage
of a maintenance worker emerging from the top of the tower with
a cage containing Rocky, who was trapped by a bait of cat food and
a Nathan’s hot dog. Reporters waited at the foot of the tower
to interview Rocky, who didnt’ have much to say. He was taken
to a wildlife preserve and released, Blumenthal said. Meanwhile, morning show broadcasters and TV newscasters took advantage of the occasion to air reports from Astroland, riding the kiddie rides and using the midway as backdrop. Rocky proved a publicity bonanza for the park. “I couldn’t ever think of doing something like that to get that much publicity,” Blumenthal said. “Richard Rodriguez does his bit, but he doesn’t get as much publicity as the raccoon gets.”
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Announcing
the Pinkies Yes,
we’re talking about the promotional gifts parks send us to
announce their new attractions. We’re talking what we in the
journalism trade affectionately call graft. While
I appreciate the gesture of affection from the parks who give to
get my attention, few of the many gifts I receive end up in my office.
Some I turn over to needy children, like the Scooby-Doo-idolizing
teen-age daughter of my ad manager, Lynne. Some I do donate to various
charity organizations. A few do end up as decorations in my office,
and one—an oversized pair of Hanes underpants bearing the Paramount
Kings Island Delirium logo—I don’t know what to
do with because Salvation Army does not accept underwear. Then
there is the utility pouch—something like that—containing
a little Swiss army knife that Six Flags Belgium sent to commemorate
the opening of Curse of Tutankhamon. Sounds like a really
nice item, but I never saw it; my wife, Sarah, laid claim to it
while I was on my most recent trip. So, sorry, Six Flags Belgium,
I cannot judge your offering against those I’m about to laud
below, many of which are pictured above. In
what might become an annual honor, I hereby extend THE LOOP’s
Best New Arrival Gift Awards. (In the tradition of the industry’s
more famous Golden and Silver honors, we’ll call ours the “Pinkies”
for short). Kudos
to Paramount’s Kings Island for the Scooby-Doo hula bank and
mousepad (they lost credit for those underpants, though), to Stone
Mountain for the stadium seat cushion, to Paramount’s Great
America for the SpongeBob SquarePants plastic backpack containing
beach toys and Rugrats video, and Indiana Beach for the I.B. Crow
bobblehead doll. The last would have been my top pick except that
I haven’t purchased the watch battery needed to make Crow sing.
Honorable
mention goes to Universal Studios Orlando for the Gingerbread Man,
a promotional announcement for the opening of its Shrek 4D
attraction. Not only was this an effective promotional gift for
the attraction, it looked mighty tasty, and it automatically induced
a smile for those of us who regard the Gingerbread Man’s interrogation
scene as one of the highlights of the original Shrek movie. Runner-up
goes to Legoland California for its spinning top commemorating the
new Bionicle Blaster ride. Not only does it spin, it plays
an electronic tune and displays a sequence of light patterns (the
star patterns are particularly fascinating). What a tie-in to a
flat ride that features spinning cups themed to the robot-like action
toys of LEGO’s Bionicles. Extra credit goes to any toy that
inspires my 14 year-old son, Ian, to say, “It’s really
fun!” and mean it. Winning
the first-ever Best New Arrival Gift “Pinkie” is Universal
Orlando for its promotion of the Jimmy Neutron’s Nicktoon
Blast, a full-scale model of Jimmy Neutron’s robotic dog
Goddard. Operated by remote control, the dog barks, whines, wags
and shakes. It puzzles cats and neighbors alike, the latter wondering
just what is it I do exactly (the former wondering why I do it)?
It was enough that this is the most elaborate gift I’ve ever
received from a park or zoo, but Universal Orlando’s marketing
team is to be further lauded for attention to a particularly important
detail. Not only did the dog come with batteries installed, the
remote control had batteries, too. We truly appreciate all the gifts, but you park operators should know you don’t have to send such things to get your New Arrival in THE LOOP. We just need a call (toll-free 888-902-LOOP in North America or 520-514-2254) or an e-mail (eric@gettheloop.com) with the news that you are about to open a new attraction at your park, zoo or FEC. Suppliers can take advantage of one of the two New Arrival advertising packages (for details, click here), including the Enhanced New Arrival package with an additional jump page of information and photos, (see the Parrot Jungle Island story above). THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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Talk about a successful pairing! Old favorites like the Parrot Show in a new home made a popular mix at Parrot Jungle Island. Photo courtesy of Parrot Jungle Island. It’s
a theme park! Bobbie
Ibarra, Parrot Jungle Island’s general manager, said the mission
hasn’t really changed as her park moved from a south Miami
upper class residential neighborhood to Watson Island in Biscayne
Bay, a skipping stone’s throw from downtown Miami. “Our
mission is the same in that we are an animal theme park that provides
family entertainment,” she said. “What we are emphasizing
more today is the entertainment component.” Parrot
Jungle, the stalwart Florida roadside attraction that opened in
1936, closed its landlocked and neighborhood-restricted site last
November and opened in its new high-profile locale with an addendum
to its name. In doing so, it re-emerged as a first-class theme park.
The “entertainment component” is no longer just performing
parrots but also a reptile show in the Serpentarium featuring venomous
snakes, crocodiles and a komodo dragon; the iconic Jungle Theater
featuring 15-story high lightweight woven fiberglass fabric sails
for a roof and staging theatrical shows by day and a big cat show
by night; the cafeteria-style Lakeside Cafe serving fare from a
first-class chef and providing seating overlooking a lake full of
pink flamingos; a retail store with high-priced museum-calibre artwork
and artifacts plus a pet store specializing in hand-raised exotic
birds; and the Treetop Ballroom, which opened in January (THE
LOOP, January 10, 2003) for banquets and meetings with spectacular
views. “One
of the things we’ll strive to do at the park is interactivity,”
said Emily Marquez, director of sales and marketing. “As you
walk throughout the park there will be people walking with animals.
You’ll be able to feed the flamingos, feed the fish, feed the
birds.” Even feed the crocodiles, along with watching the crocodiles
and alligators through underwater viewing. For
all that’s new at Parrot Jungle Island, it was two of the traditional
Parrot Jungle offerings that proved most popular for the opening
weekend crowd: the photo op with parrots and the bird show in the
1,200-seat Parrot Bowl. “You get close, you get the pictures,”
said Public Relations & Promotions Manager Daiva Fernandez of
the photo op. “It’s very Florida, the very Miami thing
to do.” The Parrot Bowl featured a mingling of the traditional
Parrot Jungle bird show with Joe Carvalho’s flying fowl performances.
In exit surveys, in which Parrot Jungle Island was receiving overall
ratings of 80 to 90 percent satisfaction, the Bird Show scored a
100 percent “very satisfied.” Being
an institution for Miami, Parrot Jungle Island’s construction
has been front-page and lead-story news throughout the past few
months. Being part of a community redevelopment grant program, Parrot
Jungle Island’s construction has been a source of pride for
the city and county government. Miami Mayor Manny Diaz participated
in the new park’s ribbon cutting and escorted his daughter
through the turnstiles as the first guest. A sudden driving rainstorm
doused the opening festivities, soaking the Polynesian dancers,
but after two hours the weather broke and the 8,000-capacity park
hosted 3,122 guests, most of those pre-sold tickets. The next day,
a Sunday, 3,678 passed through. The
majority of these were devotees of the old Parrot Jungle, and as
expected their reactions were mixed. “Some of them were displeased
because it didn’t have the lushness and quaintness of the old
park,” Marquez said. “It’s not as jungly as the old
one, but building a jungle takes more than 18 months.” Other
longtime fans, on the other hand, loved Island's newness and new
amenities. After that first weekend, the Jungle’s new location
became more of a factor though attendance figures remained steady.
“There’s a lot of newcomers and an influx of tourists
coming in,” Marquez said, including passengers on cruise ships
docking across the harbor. It’s
a good start toward Parrot Jungle Island’s “conservative
projection” of 724,000 annual attendance. With summer camp
field trip bookings kicking in this week, a spike in guests already
is expected. Citing the 110,000 cars that pass by daily on the MacArthur
Causeway between downtown Miami and South Beach, Parrot Jungle Island
owner Bern Levine said, “This location is as good as any location
on the East Coast of America.” Parrot Jungle and Gardens was “very Miami” in its kitschness. Parrot Jungle Island is “very Miami” in its soaring architecture and haute couture exhibits, theaters and amenities. Miami finally has a bona fide theme park of its own, and an entertaining one at that. Congratulations for a successful delivery
For
more photos and a story on the transfer of flora and fauna at Parrot
Jungle Island, It’s
flying
scooters! Built
in 1937 with a history that includes West View Park in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, Idora Park in Youngstown, Ohio, and back to Kennywood
in West Miflin, Pennsylvania, the traditional round ride moved to
Lake Compounce in 1997 when Kennywood took over the Connecticut
property. In 2000, Lake Compounce removed the Scooters when it expanded
its waterpark with the Mammoth Falls family raft ride. After two years in storage, the Scooters gained a new lease on life, their mechanics refurbished and the vehicles given a bright patriotic American design by Terry Lind of TLC Creative Design. Lake Compounce Vice President and General Manager Tom Wages said some guests asked about the Scooters in the interim. “For some people it’s their favorite ride,” he said. However, Lake Compounce heard no general outcry when they were removed. Rather, Wages said the ride was put back in because “It’s a great family ride, and we’re a family park.”
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The Crazy Barn undulates gently above Story Land (above), and farmer wannabes take a tractor trek in the new barnyard themed area. Photos courtesy of Story Land.
It’s
a themed area! Stoney
Morrell, owner of Story Land, is a farmer at heart. “That’s
always been something near and dear to him,” said the park’s
Marketing Coordinator Jim Miller. “He recalls reading farm
stories in his childhood, and there are still several farm stories
for children.” Being somehow related to children’s storybooks
is a key criteria for a new themed area at Story Land, and taken
together with the region’s farming heritage and the park’s
management coming across two new appealing rides, the park introduced
a newly themed addition for this year. “The
idea files are very full here, but the farming idea won out over
many others,” Miller said. The new area is yet to be officially
dedicated, so staff refer to it as the barnyard area, which, in
addition to having fabricated plants contains real crops of corn,
peas, beans, cabbage, squash, chard and other vegetables. The Sunny
Day Farm Stand sells fresh fruit snacks like apple crisp, blueberry
crisp, strawberry shortcake, cider donuts, juices, milk and, what’s
emerging as the favorite, caramel apples. The
area’s most appealing feature is the Crazy Barn a Preston
Barbieri Crazy House that Story Land asked to be themed as a barn.
Preston Barbieri’s first installation of this ride in the United
States, the Crazy Barn rises, spins and wobbles as if in
“a friendly tornado,” as Miller called it. “For our
crowd, it’s more extreme looking than anything we have, extreme
being a relative term. It’s such a great visual. People see
that from different parts of the park and are drawn to it.” Yet, the Henrietta’s Eggs-traordinary Tractor Ride, an SBF jeep ride customized as tractors featuring real tractor tires, is a natural draw in and of itself. The park’s antique cars have been one of Story Land’s most popular rides since it was first installed in 1961. “It’s an experience we know our market really loves, and to have it in a tractor is something they find very appealing,” Miller said. “We’ve been getting e-mails all winter asking when the tractor ride is going to be open, so that one has been busy since it opened.” Families got their biggest thrills at Crealy on the new flume ride. Photo courtesy of Crealy Adventure Park. It’s
a flume ride! Crealy
opened its largest capital improvement ever on schedule Saturday;
the second schedule, that is. The park had originally ordered a
flume from Reverchon with a targeted opening date in May, but when
the manufacturer’s financial troubles interfered with the ride’s
delivery, Crealy’s owners turned to L&T Ride Systems of
Bologna, Italy. “What we ended up with was a lot more than
we expected,” said the park’s managing director Angela
Wright. “The quality of the engineering is really impressive,
as is the solidity of the construction,” she said referring
to the flume’s galvanized iron. The
park had already sent brochures with Tidal Wave’s original
opening date, and consequently had to reprint a new batch. “Thank
goodness we have a lot of good will in our park anyway, so there
was a lot of understanding,” Wright said. Besides, Crealy had
not raised its admission price for this season, so people had no
incentive for complaining about a ride that wasn’t there in
the first place. Tidal
Wave, sporting Polynesian theming by Space Leisure, covers more
area of Crealy than any of the park’s other eight rides, and
its 11.5-meter second drop (the first drop is 6.5 meters/21 feet)
is the highest ride point in the park, outreaching the 8-meter (26-foot)
El Pastil Loco family roller coaster. “It’s a bit
of a step up for us,” Wright said. Yet, still, a family ride.
To
stress that point, for the opening ceremony Wright had her 100-year-old
grandmother, her mother join and her 4-year-old daughter join her
to cut the ribbon. Both her grandmother and daughter are named Amy,
and with local radio covering the event Wright illustrated how Crealy
Adventure Park could appeal to four generations. However, when it came time for taking the first official ride on Tidal Wave, only three generations boarded the log. “I didn’t take grandmum on the flume,” Angela said. “She watched from the safety of the station.” The age range was impressive, nevertheless, from 4-year-old Amy to mother Marion who, Angela said, “is slightly older than me, and slightly younger than my grandmum.” Curious giraffes watched curious kayakers watch curious giraffes in Expedition Africa. Photo courtesy of the Brevard Zoo. It’s
an African exhibit! Opening
one of the largest and, certainly, most ambitious expansions in
the zoo’s history—an exhibit that sets a new standard
of delivering views to the public—deserves a noteworthy celebration.
Brevard Zoo’s Executive Director Margo McKnight put on the
kind of grand opening celebration for Expedition Africa she thought
most appropriate. “We did nothing but have Expedition Africa
ready for the public,” said Lisa Lauf, the zoo’s interim
marketing director. “What more could you want? Margo’s
vision was, ‘Why add more mayhem?’” You
couldn’t add many more people. The zoo counted 2,085 people
visiting this Fourth of July, more than three times the 600-turnstile
rotations recorded on last year’s Independence Day. Through
the weekend 7,070 people turned out, straining the little zoo’s
capabilities. When parking space ran out, volunteers provided bus
service from remote parking sites. Expedition Africa’s grand
opening garnered nearly blanket media coverage, Lauf said, including
radio remotes, a 12-page special section in the local paper, stories
in newspaper and television outlets from Orlando as well as the
Space Coast, and wire service dissemination.“We had people
in from Naples, Tampa and Gainesville,” Lauf said. She also
had a huge stack of membership renewal forms on her desk. The
big turnout from locals, at least, was expected because the Brevard
County community built this zoo and built the new exhibit. The official
price tag for Expedition Africa is $2.5 million, but the zoo estimates
it received another $2.5 million worth of donated skills, supplies
and labor. Community volunteers helped rebuild the Cape to Cairo
Express train, dig the trench for the Nyami Nyami River, and
construct the boardwalk and Savanna Overlook. Don’t, however,
mistake “community build” for cheap; what Brevard Zoo
has delivered with Expedition Africa would cost some zoos $10 million
to $30 million to emulate. The
animals—five reticulated and Masai giraffes, two white rhinos,
five species of antelopes and nine species of birds, including ostrich—roam
a single exhibit space, the combination of species providing constantly
varying movement and color in the 10-acre expanse. Guests have a
choice of three vantage points to see the exhibit. They can walk
over the Baobab Bridge past artist Roger Naumann’s baobab tree
and on an elevated boardwalk to a 9-foot (2.7-meter) overlook of
the exhibit. They can take the Cape to Cairo Express train
to a different part of the exhibit. And, in a revolutionary concept
for zoo viewing, they can kayak. Tours
of up to five, two-passenger kayaks float around the exhibit on
the Nyami Nyami River, with up to four tours running at one time.
Guides kayak at the front and rear of the fleet providing information
on the exhibit. The kayaks are free floating but kept away from
the animals by a channel of terrestrial barriers submerged in the
8-foot-deep (2-meter-deep) river disguised by water plants and deadfall.
The animals are kept away from the kayaks by virtue of their natural
disinterest in submerging themselves in water. At $5 per person,
the exhibit’s opening three-day weekend saw a total of 803
kayak trips, near capacity, Lauf said. Opening Expedition Africa to such resounding success should give Brevard Zoo cause to celebrate. For the community, being there is celebration enough. In
the nursery Mountain
Creek guests funneled through their High Anxiety. Photo
by Eric Minton/THE LOOP.
Children had buckets of fun on Quassy's new waterplay structure, when the weather cooperated. Photo by Eric Minton/THE LOOP. It’s
a waterplay complex! It’s
a carousel! Families had a whale of a time on Lake Compounce's new Clipper. Photo by Eric Minton/THE LOOP. It’s
a waterplay complex! | ||||
